I was reading Peter Kropotkin book and he made an AMAZING point that if anything, power structures and capitalism are utopian! To believe, that the people you place as higher with more Power, would make the right decisions for you when it goes polar opposite to them GAINING more power in a system that only recognizes furthering of power, is I'd say, far more utopian than to believe that people will literally work together to make communities where everyone is happy... like they literally did for MOST of human history before stuff like monarchies were established
I’m gonna try explain why it feels like to me you’re kind of missing the point.
Like we can think breaking laws in general is good because it makes these useless laws harder to enforce if a lot of people break them. Ie. its a form of resistance against the state.
But also be staunchly against terrible things like random killings and sexual assault.
I never mentioned the Non agression pact. Simply that Stalin and Hitler cooperated in an invasion of Poland. I don’t think that’s deniable.
Also, I’m not sure I’m going to take Cowbee’s take seriously when they frame Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as self defence. And who calls modern CCP controlled China “Democratic”.
We should also clarify how we define "class" which is key to our understanding of power, and which differs from narrower Marxist conceptions. Like power, we see class as a relationship. In this sense, class is defined in relation to ownership or control not only of the means of production (e.g. machinery, land, housing), which we share with Marxism, but also of the means of coercion (e.g. police, military, prisons) and administration (e.g. governmental bodies that create and administer the laws). Those who own or control the means of production, coercion, and administration are part of the dominant classes (e.g. capitalists, political officials, military leadership, police, judges, governors), placing them in a structural position to exploit, oppress, and dominate those who do not, who are part of the dominated classes (e.g. waged, unwaged and precarious workers, the unemployed, and the incarcerated).
I don’t think that’s a good reason to like Stalin.
You could say something similar about Churchill vis à vis Nazis. Doesn’t change the fact he was a cunt.
Plus Stalin literally cooperated with Hitler to invade Poland, commiting atrocities in the process. So while I appreciate that the USSR is one of the, if not the, major reasons the Nazis fell, I don’t see it as out of good faith.
very interesting. got a source?